Our next guest is Dr. Courtney Valerio, veterinary pathologist. So thank you for being here and welcome to The Junction.

Thank you for having me.

Can you tell us a bit about your background and what drove you to the field of veterinary forensics?

So I have a bachelor's degree in animal and poultry sciences, and then I worked on a farm for a little bit after that. And I decided I wanted to attend veterinary school, and during vet school, I really liked pathology. I liked that it was so visual, and I could see disease. like actual disease. It didn't feel like I was, um, guessing, uh, which sounds awful. Um, but for example, taking imaging or, or things like that, we're always kind of doing our, our kind of best guess, and oftentimes you are correct, but what I really like about pathology is you can actually see the process. So I went into general practice for a little bit and, through that and after some time there, I began a pathology residency and upon completion of my residency, I then went through a fellowship here at UF in forensic medicine or veterinary forensic pathology, I should say. So that's kind of the background of that. Um, I particularly like pathology because it is, the cases are very interesting, but they also have a component that not only helps animals, but also helps people, basically.

Kind of like a higher purpose?

Yeah, yeah, um, and I think they're very important. I think it's important to, to see these cases, for these cases to go through the judicial system, or even just for more cases to, to be brought to us. Sometimes they just, for other circumstances, don't get to go through the system. But, I think that it basically brings kind of awareness to this because we've known for years and years and years that there's a link between animal abuse and child abuse and elder abuse and spousal or partner, um, violence. So sometimes through, these cases, we may be able to help other animals or help other people. So others may come to me and be like, Oh, your job is so, depressing. Uh, and really, and it is, um, but you really have to compartmentalize and think about the bigger picture. Um, and as far as what you're doing, not only for like specifically this animal, cause you are giving it a voice at the end of the day. Um, but for any others too.

Yeah, I get that as well, that people will say, like, how can you sleep at night, you know, with all these things that you see, how can you go along, and I feel like it's, I'm looking from here on forward, right, I'm trying not to dwell on what happened, I'm trying to figure out what happened, so that I can get justice, and like you said, keep animals and the community safe.

Very, very true, yes. And also, just for the sake of Science, you know, um, every case I see, I don't automatically have like this image of this terrible person unless we sometimes we give video or photos whatever. Um, but really, you know, in, in the quest for the truth, a lot of times it is sad, but other times it can be exonerating. Um, for example, we've had cases of suspected poisoning and it turned out the dog had cancer. So, you know, we were able to exonerate everybody and be like, it's okay. You know, you don't have like this sociopath in your neighborhood. This dog, unfortunately, just passed away suddenly from that. So, it can be, it can definitely be used for, for both sides.

So what's going to be the main difference between a forensic autopsy versus like a general autopsy that a regular veterinarian would do?

So in the veterinary world, it is a bit different than the human world in that respect. Um, Because I, of what I assume in the human world, I'm sorry if there are, uh, human pathologists being like, no, that's not right. Um, but in, in the vet world anyway, um, it is broken up into a further niched area. Uh, and so in, in general pathology, really the cases that they would receive have no, no legal matter kind of attached to them. They're, usually not cases of suspected cruelty unless there's just out of necessity, um, they would be given to that pathologist. But in, in general terms that type of veterinary pathology, veterinary anatomic pathology, is used for disease control, disease surveillance, things of that nature, or someone who maybe, known their dog has died suddenly and they're pretty sure, you know, it's, it wasn't the neighbor, but I want to know what happened may come to a, we call them in our, sort of world of diagnostic pathology. I, you know, maybe it came through them for that purpose. And so from, forensics, when we receive something, um, Really, it's because there is a suspected criminal or civil legal matter that may need to be, uh, resolved or may come up or, or is very evident. And because of that, our documentation of those cases is very intense. So, for example, in regular diagnostic pathology we wouldn't take intake, tons of intake photos. We wouldn't take tons of, um, photos of external exam or of organs or anything like that. Usually it's, uh, very limited. And maybe photos would be taken if there was like a, a very specific lesion or finding. But other than that, it's not really, um, done. There's no chain of custody associated with that body like there is for our cases. And the written reports of ours are very different than the reports that are typically written for diagnostic pathology. So ours, we hit every organ, normal, abnormal, and you just really wouldn't do that in regular veterinary pathology. Usually you just hit the points that are abnormal. And so it's really the documentation that it, it kind of boils down to, um, and how different that those two are. That's not to say that we don't ever see disease in our cases, kind of like what I said before. Sometimes even though we do all this documentation, all this sort of stuff, you know, it's just becomes an endogenous disease that we find and that is the cause of death. Um, so that's why it's important to have the training of your residency before you try to take on the forensic aspect of it.

And it's, I don't think that a lot of people understand how intense a residency in pathology is. I guess you have to see a lot of cases and then, see a lot of normal and a lot of abnormal, and then get prepared. Now, that said, a lot of rural areas may have veterinarians that are, and they don't, not have access to a pathologist. So is it useless for a regular practitioner to learn how to do forensic autopsies? Or is there a value in that?

That's a really tough question, honestly. And it's because different Stages of decomposition of these bodies can very easily mimic disease processes that are often seen in the cases that we see in forensic pathology. So for example, um, if a body is, is decomposed and mummified, it can appear like it's emaciated, but it never was in life. or a phenomenon called livor mortis, which is just the settling or pooling of blood within the vessels after death, um, may appear like bruising. So it gets very tricky, uh, for a general practitioner to maybe, um, overcome those obstacles. That being said, a fresh body. Um, maybe, um, especially if it's something very obvious, like a gunshot wound or a stab wound, you may be able to kind of forward that examination. But it's a big ask, I think, for those general practitioners. They already have to do, you So much, um, on top of that, you know, in human medicine, you have your anesthesiologist and you have your radiologist and you have your dentist and the veterinarian is Almost in a public eye, there's an expectation that they would be all of these things, and it's a lot. Um, I remember feeling like, oh my god, you have to be a jack of all trades in, in general practice. So to add on to that stress, you know, to be able to then perform these autopsies to this really high level, um, is, is to me very daunting. I mean, that would be like Asking me now to, you know, do this complicated, surgery, maybe take out a lung lobe or something, you know, it's, I think it's a big ask. Um, unfortunately I can see why the ask is there though. But we're really hoping that through programs like mine or even the veterinary forensic master's program, at least you can get an idea, and you can be exposed to different things and that may help you if you're in an intensely like rural area where there's not a lot of resources. With that being said, please email us or call us anytime with questions. We're more than happy to, to talk to practitioners and we do it quite, quite often. I know that there's not that many of us, but with this fellowship program, we're real, just really hoping to, to change that. And, uh, to kind of like pull some people that might be like, Oh, I kind of am interested. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's cool over here. So, so we're really hoping to, to expand the, the field in that way to help with that burden.

Most of the time what people want to know with a forensic autopsy is cause of death, but there's a difference between cause of death and mechanism of death. So can you tell us what both things mean?

Yes. So cause of death is basically the initial action that has been the impetus for, all these tiny, uh, little be physiological or biochemical derangements that end up to be the mechanism of death. So in other words, uh, blunt force trauma to the head. So let's say someone hit a dog, uh, with a baseball bat in the head and the dog is immediately dead. The cause of death would be that blunt force trauma. The mechanism of that death would be traumatic brain injury. And that's kind of kind of the difference. Another example would be a dog with an intense hookworm burden. So hookworm will just suck blood, they, consume quite a bit of blood. So if you have a very large burden, it will result in a depletion of blood from the body. So the hookworm would be the cause of death and the mechanism of death would be the anemia or the lack of red blood cells in the body that would cause, multi system organ failure and reduced oxygen throughout the entire body that would lead to death.

What's the process for doing a forensic autopsy?

So it's quite an intense process. Usually our autopsies take us at least two hours. If there are any external wounds they will take much longer. And that's again due to all the intense documentation for each individual wound. Uh, so the process basically starts with us reading our intake forms and that will come with history of the animal, if any, the immediate history, how it was found, any kind of witness or statements from animal control or law enforcement. And then we would start with our exam of the body. So that's an external exam. We look at the fur, we look at the nutritional condition, we look at the feet, the claws, the hooves, the teeth, um, all of that good stuff. And then we will take any, insects that may be on the body at that time for a preservation or attempt to rear them. And then we move on to our internal exam, which includes full skinning of the body to see the subcutaneous tissue and then opening up the chest cavity and the abdominal cavity to view the organs. Each organ is then removed and photographed, and then we do a more intense dissection of each organ, the gastrointestinal system is completely removed and it's opened up, we get to see, you know, what did it eat? How is it digesting? Is it creating formed feces, things like that. All of these steps and all of these organs are photographed as well. And, then we end with the collection of very small pieces of those organs, and we collect them for two purposes. Say we have liver, we'll collect a piece of liver for fixation, so we're stopping the rotting of that tissue, and we may later use that tissue for microscopic examination. And then we'll also take a second piece of liver for fresh tissue. So if we ever want to attempt to culture bacteria from the liver or fungus or if we want to use that tissue for toxicological exam or testing then we'll use that. The fresh tissue we freeze and we have a locked evidence locker in which we have like freezers and empty space for room temperature stuff and things like that. Each case we kind of evaluate if we want to go further, further meaning microscopic exam and, or that ancillary testing. Uh, and about, I would say about half to two thirds of our cases get microscopic exam. And then ancillary testing. So ancillary testing just means any other thing outwith of gross. So what we can see with our eyes at microscopic exam of the tissue. So that would be toxicological testing. It could be a urine analysis, snap tests for basic, like feline diseases of the blood, like FELV, FIV, things like that. After we've finished all of that, we try to put all these pieces of our, of our puzzle together. And hopefully we do get an answer. Hopefully we do get, why dead? Or, or why euthanized? Um, sometimes we don't. Uh, and that can be dependent on tons of variables including where in the decompositional stage the body's in. If we do need to do like, say, tox testing, can the municipality afford that? Or is the owner willing to go that far, or do they want to stop here? So those variables can come into play sometimes. Sometimes we don't think that that testing is really going to yield anything or we don't really have a direction in which to go. Toxicological testing isn't like, It's not like CSI where it's like, Oh, I sent it to tox, test for everything. You know, we still need to have an avenue, you know, to go down. And sometimes we, we just don't, we don't want to be like blowing 800 for, for all this stuff. So it can be, it can be tricky sometimes, but we, we really do try, and we really take a lot of time to think about these cases, talk about these cases, uh, to help us find an answer..

Is there any point at which you would say that doing a forensic autopsy is useless because of too much decomposition or too much damage, or is it always best to do an examination and see if there is any information that you can get?

So I'll answer this with something that I was taught really early in my residency, and you're not going to know unless you test. And the same thing goes for these bodies. Even though they may appear to not have any value, or testability, if they're bones in a bag, I think still we can take a look at them and see what we see. We can even, bones in a bag, for example. Uh, we may have some fur on those. We may know the color or one of the colors of the dog, or cat, which we would be able to tell from the bones. Are there any fractures? Is there any evidence of a healed fracture? Things like that, that we still can glean. Um, we can even use very decomposed skeletal muscle for that may be like a little bits hanging on, we still may be able to glean something, you know, from that. We still can see, are there barbiturates in the, in the skeletal muscle of this animal may have been euthanized. Um, so I think it does behoove us to look at these bodies in, in no matter what stage.

If we have investigators, animal control officers or veterinarians that are listening to this episode and they're, and they're interested in having your services, how should they preserve the body and what is the best way to submit it?

So it's a really good question. When you practice in Florida, things decompose quite quickly. Um, me coming from, uh, my residency in Missouri, it didn't, you know, in the winter at least, you know, it didn't happen that fast, but for, definitely for here, it, it can. So the best that I can tell you is, for, for those that can drive to our lab, if you're able to, in the first like 48 hours of finding the body, especially if it's fresh, then that's great. Refrigeration is fine. If it's going to take longer or if you're going to ship that body to us, frozen is probably going to be a bit better. We do prefer fresh bodies. However, we get frozen bodies very, very frequently. There are artifacts that can happen as a result of freezing. It doesn't preclude finding lesions in the body or anything like that. It doesn't, you know, prevent us from really finding answers that we were going to find anyway if we were just given it fresh. Although it's kind of the secondary, it's often the necessary way to to store a body. I think any really any way else. is, is really not it. Um, you definitely don't want to leave a body out in the sun or outside, and this is just because of two things. The body will continue to decompose even if it's cool, but of course in Florida where it's very hot, we will get that very quickly. And then also because of scavenging. Scavengers will go for the natural body holes and attempt to extract organs from those holes. And because of that, sometimes we won't see all the organs or, the skin will start to decompose that it begins to form a hole and then a scavenger will go in that way. Um, so sometimes then it can be like, was this a stab wound? You know, was this a gunshot wound? Is it a hole from a scavenger? You know, sometimes we don't know. So it, In any case, refrigeration or frozen, you can always call us as well, but if the body is outside, please get it in, please double bag it, and put a tag on the bag. Another thing that's really important for these bodies, not only for storage, chain of custody. So immediately right when you pick up that body, a chain of custody form should be started, and then continue on with the body. So the original form goes with the body wherever the body goes. So we receive a lot of chain of custody forms from, uh, different municipalities. Sometimes we have to create a form when the body comes to us. And that's just, in the grand scheme of things, it is just best practice to start the chain of custody form right as you collect the body.

How can investigators get a hold of you guys if they want to submit a sample or a full body for an autopsy?

So, on our website for the lab, we have Dr. Stern and his email and his phone number, and Me, my email, my phone number, and that's really the easiest way to, to contact us.

Excellent. Well, thank you very much for giving us your time and sharing your knowledge and thank you for everything that you do for animals.

Thank

you for having me. I've enjoyed my time.